People keep telling me about “The Killing,” a police procedural mini-series from Denmark, and a hit on British TV. (Also redone in a U.S. version, based in Seattle, our own spot for the school of Northern Crime drama or “Skandi Noir.”)
Not sure I can take it, but Jenny Turner’s take in the LRB Blog makes me want to at least give it a try:
I wonder if this is a deep reason for the popularity of The Killing, and of Skandi noir in general. It enacts a world, a dreampolitik, in which public servants are glamorous, well paid and respected, and dedicated to the point of obsession. This flatters the many viewers who work in the public sector, even the ones who hate their jobs and want to retrain in reiki. And it offers all of us something warm and elegant to look at, like the row of Poulsen lights in the politician’s chilly kitchen. It’s utopia for sad liberals, restrained and minimal. It’s the closest a lot of us ever get to a vision of social hope.
A Few Reasonable Words 